


From Orphan to Icon: Shadowing the Acid Byrns

by acciopotatoes



Category: Half Life Trilogy - Sally Green
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Rock Band AU, fuck yeah i love rock band aus, possible more for others, theres an aethetic set for nathan for this fic on tumblr somewhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-04-02
Packaged: 2018-03-20 23:28:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3669162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acciopotatoes/pseuds/acciopotatoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the much-anticipated half bad punk rock band au.......need i say more</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Orphan to Icon: Shadowing the Acid Byrns

**Author's Note:**

> this was inspired loosely by the rock band au for The 100 called "the feel-good hit of the summer" by disco_vendetta which is my all-time favorite rock band au, the rock band au to end all other rock band aus. i highly recommend you read it, and trust me when i say that it'll make sense even if you don't watch The 100. however, it doesn't have anything to do with this fic except for giving me the idea to write a rock band au. 
> 
> my tumblr is currently at sorrybutnothanks.tumblr.com, and somewhere in my "specifically rock band au" tag is an aesthetic post for nathan for this fic. i also take requests for fic and enjoy talking to people, so hit me up!

_article from_ Rolling Stone, _January 2016 edition_

**From Orphan to Icon: Shadowing The Acid Byrns**

MY FIRST ENCOUNTER with frontman Nathan Byrn of The Acid Byrns is at a coffeeshop; the hum of machines in the background making double-shot low-fat vanilla mocha fraps for that one annoying customer who's always in front of you in line, the jazzy blues music quietly beepbopiddledo-ing through the speakers, and the dozen other people scattered around at tables are all witness to this event. I am sitting at a corner table near the back - I was warned that Byrn is unusually shy for a frontman, so I decided that a prominent table wouldn't be a good idea. After meeting him, I can say with certainty that although he probably was shy as a child, that shyness has since evolved into a "don't look at me" sort of defense mechanism. Byrn isn't antisocial, per say (alright, maybe a little), but he is clearly uncomfortable with too much scrutiny and can be standoffish in response. Still, this behavior is not what one expects from the frontman of the biggest band in the punk rock scene at the moment.

He was exactly ten minutes early to our interview, and none of the other bandmates came along. Just as well, I suppose, because experience says that band members act differently around their frontman during an interview. He went directly to my table and shook my hand firmly with a quiet but polite hello. The waiter took our orders - Byrn takes his coffee black, but did allow the barista to serve it with whipped cream. I ask him about that strange combination as an icebreaker. He shrugs, looks down at his drink. "Gabriel rubs off on you, I guess." Huh? "Well," he elaborates upon further questioning, "Rose makes fun of just about everything, including Gabriel's weird eating habits, and since Gabriel makes the food his tastes kind of gets incorporated into the menu."

Byrn has the smell of cigarette tobacco lingering on him, and certainly looks the part of a punk rock frontman. He's got a biker jacket with patches ranging from "EQUALITY NOW" to "ACCEPTANCE HAS NO EXCEPTIONS" and the old "ONCE YOU GO BLACK YOU NEVER GO BACK". There are studs on the shoulders. Underneath that is a faded t-shirt with a smoke exhale design, and his jeans are torn at the knees. His knuckles on his left hand lightly bruised, and the parts of his jeans that are torn have old stains that I don't ask him about. Byrn's eyes are dark, steady, and focused, counteracting the tapping of his fingers on the coffee mug and the legs jogging underneath the table - possible Restless Leg Syndrome? His presence is intense yet somehow detached, and every once and awhile he runs his hand through his hair, messing up the slight mohawk.

Throughout the interview, Byrn keeps eye contact just enough to avoid seeming rude, but isn't in much of a hurry to go above and beyond basic manners. These manners, as I learn, were instilled in him by his grandmother, which provides an opening to ask about his family. He doesn't take it well.

As anyone with access to cheap supermarket tabloids knows, Cora Byrn, heiress and head of surgery at a local hospital, had an affair with infamous crime boss Marcus, whose actual identity is uncertain. This all culminated when he killed Cora Byrn's husband and father of her three children. Rumors say that Nathan Byrn, her fourth child, is Marcus's son and not the child of Cora Byrn's now-deceased husband, but the Byrn family refused to have him genetically tested. Or maybe they just couldn't afford it, since the family fortune was donated to charity shortly after Cora Byrn's death. The only thing fueling these rumors of illegitimacy is the media's desire to add a scandal to the recent success of The Acid Byrns and supposedly a hysterical confession by Cora Byrn herself moments before she threw herself through a fifteenth-floor window in her inherited penthouse. However, no one else was present except for one of her daughters, and even if there was evidence of this confession the stability of Cora Byrn's mind at the time would still throw the claim into question. The daughter present at the suicide was Jessica Byrn, who is currently a police officer. The two other Byrn children, Deborah and Arran, seem to be on good terms with Nathan based on their social media interaction, but Jessica and her brother exchange only the occasional impersonal message.

With such a past, it isn't surprising that Nathan Byrn reacts as he does to my question about family. To save face, I quickly ask him about his former band membership. He latches onto the change in topic. "At first it was me and my brother, and we called ourselves Arran the Side of Caution, you know, err on the side of caution and all that, because we were kids and we thought it'd be funny. It got us some fans, though, who came for the name and stayed for the music. It wasn't exactly rock, but that's what we called it." After Byrn left the brother duet, Arran kept the original band name and rebranded as a solo rapper. I'm hesitant to ask why Byrn left the band, because if I ask about a topic that he doesn't take well to again he might close off completely. Instead, our interview continues and I use a well-known tactic: carry on small talk and observe what the other won't say.

Byrn switches between fidgety and calm, and I don't know him well enough to say what causes the switch. One moment he's drumming on the table and tapping his foot, and the next he's completely still and focused. He seems to be on good terms with the other members of the band - he describes bassist Rose as "small but powerful, with one of those batteries that just won't quit, you know? If I had to compare her to something else I'd say she's like that Energizer bunny. Pink and fluffy but a bit intimidating in her own way." As for drummer Gabriel, other than the original comment about food, Byrn only says that "He and I have some shared experiences and shared tastes that led to us forming the band." This seems like a strange thing to say, considering that Byrn's music has always had a decidedly anarchist undertone covered in a layer of sweetly painful lyrics, whereas his bandmate and drummer has an indie past that ended in tragedy. Maybe that's what Byrn is referring to?

By the end of our talk, a motherly part of me is concerned for this quiet, complex frontman - he's the lead of one of the latest big bands in the punk rock scene, and fame has not always been kind to those who prefer solitude and forests to loud crowds and bright city lights.

Two days after this conversation, the first EP of The Acid Byrns and what will become one of their biggest hits, _Trickster_ , goes platinum.

 

THE NEXT TIME I see Byrn and the first time I meet the other band members is when I'm invited on the tour bus for the next stretch of concerts. _Rolling Stone_ has assigned me to shadow The Acid Byrns, giving me a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to watch as the band either takes off or crashes on the runway. Since there are only three band members, there are two extra bunks, and I settle into one. At first I am an outsider who simply observes the pattern of these kids in their early twenties, and it's not until later that I am finally a part of what goes on instead of a watcher. Still, that period of outside-looking-in gives me several observations about the bandmates; Rose is indeed an Energizer bunny, and Gabriel is an adorable teddy bear.

Thank you, Gabriel of The Acid Byrns, for giving me an opportunity to compare a rock 'n roll drummer to a stuffed animal.

Gabriel is up before any of the others, and he does in fact make strange food. He himself doesn't have anything more than pastries with a mixture of spreads - mostly croissants with toppings that do not look very appetizing - but he knows how everyone takes their breakfast, and it doesn't take him long to find out mine. Rose is up as soon as the smell of food hits the air, and she receives a plate of toast and hash browns with bacon on the side. Carbs, carbs, and cholesterol. How does she not have a myriad of health problems with that daily diet? Byrn takes the longest to get up, although if there's something to do that day he wakes up fast. I'm told that he doesn't sleep well, so when he does eventually he keeps it going as long as possible. If it's a free day he doesn't get out of bed until past noon. His breakfast is the standard eggs, bacon, and toast, although flairs of the chef's tastes show up more on Byrn's plate than they do on Rose's - some whipped cream on black coffee, some weird jam on the toast, something definitely not recognizable on the eggs. Byrn doesn't seem to mind, though, and eats it without complaint.

Rose takes her daily coffee with whiskey, and I am left, yet again, to wonder at her health. Gabriel tells me that on special occasions she uses vodka instead, preferably licorice flavored, although depending on where they are that can sometimes be difficult to find. Rose never ceases to amaze me. She must have developed in the womb without tastebuds, or an alcohol threshold.

She is relatively short, at least in comparison to her two bandmates, and I adamantly agree with Byrn's description of "small but powerful". Rose, the bassist of The Acid Byrns and famed for her incredible skill and wild stage presence, doesn't seem very intimidating in person. She has long hair with pastel streaks, and smells like cotton candy. Her clothes are more of a colorful indie style than they are a punk rock look, although she can and will look like a member of a biker gang when she wants. Mostly, though, her clothes are lightweight and pastel, and she owns exactly three pairs of shoes, none of which are fit for any formal occasion. She is surprisingly giggly and jokingly flirtatious, which isn't what one expects from a member of a punk rock band.

Rose knows Gabriel from just following the tragic forced breakup of his first band, an indie rock sort of deal, fronted by his sister Michèle. However, she was murdered while on her way to visit a boyfriend, and the only details made available to the public are that the death was gang related and that Michèle was in the wrong part of town at the wrong time. Following this, Gabriel moved back to his childhood home in Switzerland with his father, and stopped making music for just under a year. This changed when his producer, Mercury Management, decided to team him up with Rose, hoping that a change in music style would help.

Rose was formerly a solo punk rock singer, who played all of her own instruments in studio recordings and only ever hired backup for performances. She was signed with Mercury Management from a very young age, and comes from a classical background, although that evidently didn't imprint onto her genes. In former interviews, the CEO of Mercury Management has been very open in admitting that Rose is considered to be a daughter of the company, and Rose admits that Mercury Management has has a great impact on her sound.

 

I DON'T FIND out about the origin of the band name until we're all sitting around a game of solitaire that Byrn is playing - and losing. It's incredibly frustrating to watch, because he is atrocious at card games, apparently. "He's just about as good at solitaire as he his at managing to not stare at Gabriel's ass," Rose deadpans, but follows it up quickly with a charming smile and a bit of a laugh. Byrn throws a pillow at her, hard. She tumbles off the couch, shouting, "You wound me, good sir!" She's giggling as she says it, and Gabriel mutters something under his breath. Byrn glances at him with an eyebrow raised and, possibly deliberately, lays down the card on the wrong stack with a flourish. It has to be on purpose; no one can be this bad at solitaire. It's unheard of.

Later into the game, I ask about the band name. Wordlessly, Byrn casually rolls up the left sleeve of his biker jacket to show me a thick scar encircling his wrist. Is that why his sleeves are always a bit too long? I had assumed it was just a preference for the style, but maybe not. The story comes out with a little prodding. "I managed to get some acid all over my wrist," Byrn says. "It almost would've burnt all the way through if I hadn't kept washing it off. Also, the EMTs arrived pretty quickly." Something in the way he says _EMT_ makes me think that they weren't the ones on the scene, and the way the scar looks it definitely didn't heal with very much professional help. Still, the fact that it healed at all, let alone well enough for Byrn to still have use of his fingers, is proof that medicine did come into the equation eventually. Byrn won't say how he somehow got acid all around his wrist to form the bracelet of a scar, and after a few attempts from me to get the story out he visibly shuts me out, and Rose shoves me off the couch while Gabriel says "Leave him alone, for christssake."

The real acid in this particular situation is in the way I'm shunned after that conversation. Gabriel burns my food habitually to the point of it being inedible by anyone's standards, Rose swaps out my duvet for one infested by fleas - where she got it from and where my old one went, I have no idea. I was reduced to buying a new one from the bargain store, along with some spraycan insecticide. It helps some, although I still have bug bites for the rest of the tour, even after I am forgiven. This forgiveness doesn't happen until after Byrn himself starts treating me like a human again, and once he does the other two are quick to follow, acting like nothing had happened even while I am slapping at bugs on my legs with visible relief on my face when I am handed a plate of actual food.

 

RIGHT BEFORE THE gig in LA, California, Rose takes the four of us to the Alleys, a sort of combination mall/street bazaar located in, you guessed it, a series of alleys and what might have once been parking garages. Because parking is so scarce in densely-populated LA, we somehow managed to maneuver the bus - which is thankfully a bit small by tour bus standards, since there are only three members of the band and none of them place much value on sleeping arrangements - onto a parking place on a rooftop. We take a cage elevator down to the street level and step out into what was possibly formerly a garage, with sections and booths made out of grating from the ceiling to the floor. There are shops for purses, food, shirts, and everything you could think of, and when we leave that we walk through an alley with the same sort of feel. The farther you get from the center of the Alleys, the more actual storefronts there are.

It's incredibly hot and humid, as it's currently August and we are in Southern California, after all. The show is held indoors, but without anything more than a swamp cooling system it's still very uncomfortable and the crowd is visibly sticky but somehow still excited. The final set list for the concert is this:

Altered Visions _(we've got altered visions, sis/you're telling horror stories but somehow still the truth)_ Closing In _(their promises are sickly sweet with your fear/they know they've got you, got you)_ Beach Kicks _(wanna escape for a day, maybe a year/wanna get outta here)_                           Memory Orchestra _(the band in the pit saws away to the music/on stage the doctors are sawing away at you)_                                                                                                                                                         Right Back Again _(I fucked up and fell again/fell for you/now I'm right back again, right back again)_       Run _(run now kid, better run fast/don't trust anyone or you'll be back on your ass)_                       Antidote _(I'm sick for you/but don't worry dear, I've got the antidote to all your hurts)_               Hallucinogenic _(we've been waiting for months now/not sure what I'm on, to see you this way)_           Trickster _(there's only one trick in the game/just don't care, just don't care)_

The songs are written by mostly Byrn but with occasional help from Gabriel and Rose. Byrn's lyrics share a softly sad feeling, despite the harsh loud music he writes, and the titles he chose for songs are obscurely personal, such as _Beach Kicks, Closing In,_ and _Trickster_. Gabriel has said that he drew influences from literature and poetry for the music released with his sister, and the songs he titled typically have an elaborate feeling, like _Altered Visions, Hallucinogenic_ , and _Memory Orchestra_. His lyrics are difficult to decipher and his music is typically surprisingly slow, such as _Antidote,_ which has a smooth liquid feeling and is sung by both Byrn and Gabriel in alternating lines.

Rose doesn't write often but when she does it's unexpectedly angry. When I brought this up, Gabriel said only "Rose is the most likely to stab someone out of all of us." This seems out of place for the smiling girl with colored eyeliner and big blue eyes, but I supposed that he would know her better than I.

Her titles are straightforward and blunt, such as _Right Back Again, Run,_ and _Antidote_.

 

ROSE IS ALSO the only one out of the three who doesn't have any tattoos. "I just don't see why anything is important enough that I'll want to see it every day for the rest of my life. The only thing that necessary to me is me, you know, and I can always just look in a mirror for that," she says. The way she emphasizes certain words doesn't make the statement sound narcissistic, just certain. Rose doesn't need anyone else, and she doesn't rely on others. So much so that even when she can't reach something she refuses to let someone else get it for her, although that might just be pride.

Byrn has the most tattoos out of all of them, with a B .05 on his finger joints and a few vines trailing up his arms. There are two sets of loose, looping cursive around his neck, the words written in such a spaced-out way that I have no idea what the letters form. "Well, the higher up one is the newest of the two," he says distractedly when I ask him about it. He's laying in his bunk and sketching on a paper. Byrn draws a lot, although I've never seen any of the results. He rarely seems to write words or read them, but that might be because, as Rose has mentioned, he's dyslexic.

I find out that the first one of the two is the lowest one, practically across his collarbones instead of his neck proper. It says "the trick is not to mind" all around, which reminds me of the lyrics to the band's biggest hit, _Trickster._ The second tattoo is higher, actually on his neck this time, saying "the new trick is to live in the moment". He has an industrial ear piercing and a stud in his lip. His hair is an undercut that he sometimes styles into a bit of a mohawk. Occasionally he uses Rose's infinite hair dye to but red streaks in it. His clothes always smell of smoke.

Gabriel smokes also, and has two tattoos, although one of them is large and spans the side of his torso. It's a jagged sort of crack design, like a fault line after an earthquake. He also has a bird on the inside of his wrist. He is unquestionably the mom of the band, while Rose is the affectionate yet sort of deadbeat dad. Byrn, despite being the frontman, is basically their son.

After staying with The Acid Byrns for the two weeks remaining in this tour, I finally part ways in a small town in Northern California with a big foresting industry. Gabriel hands me his aviator sunglasses as a goodbye present without any words, which is unusual, as he is probably the most talkative member of the band. Well, with Rose as a challenger. She hugs me and makes a joke, laughing. Byrn shakes my hand again, politely but firmly, and he gives me a rare smile.

 

THREE MONTHS AFTER my time with The Acid Byrns has ended, I received a notice while in my office that Rose was killed in what is said to be a mugging gone wrong. However, what actually happened is unclear, as Nathan Byrn was present along with his sister, police officer Jessica Byrn, and he has testified that Jessica could have stopped the shooter but refused. What her motive would have been and the level of her overall involvement in this tragedy is unclear, but what is certain is that the world has lost not only a highly skilled musician and a carefree friend but also a multifaceted personality that I was privileged to know at least a few sides of. This article is dedicated to her, and also to the grieving remaining members of The Acid Byrns. Having known Rose only for a few weeks, I cannot say that I fully feel the depths of their loss, but I can say that I saw firsthand how close the three were and how interdependent their friendship was. Gabriel has currently gone radio silent, and the media isn't sure where he is at the moment. Byrn is said to be writing a song in memoriam of his bandmate and close friend.

 

 

 

_Annalise O'Brien is a music and entertainment industry reporter who currently writes for Rolling Stone. She has two years experience writing freelance before this. Her personal site is aobrien.com._


End file.
